When zandtao discussed his practice before threshold in Ch3 his focus was on realignment, and this appears not to fit the two themes of practice:-
In fact alignment is a process that is common to both:-
Alignment that is free from restrictions Alignment with consciousness
Let me try to get into this to overcome any confusion that his practice might have caused in terms of the themes. As zandtao has emphasised throughout, we need to be concerned with our upbringing; to that end please reconsider the development model discussed in Ch3 - Addon A. As with any model zandtao has a proviso, and he wants to discuss it again to reinforce. Do not accept as truth any model zandtao describes. zandtao asks for the tentative approach again - tentatively "live with" the model and see if it improves your practice. After some time with the practice, allow your mindfulness to consider the model or additions to the model:- what does mindfulness say? Have you had insights into the model?
Let us consider an obvious additional stage in the development model between Prebirth and Early Life - Birth itself. At birth there is a radical outpouring of love - mother love, and this love is central to our path.
Would that we could bring that pure mother love with us throughout life!
As described in the model there is early life in which "seed-consciousness builds its host" through khandhas. Based on ego-evolve-consciousness with those khandhas there will have come some sort of restrictions as attachments - too soon to call them egos. But much more importantly at this early stage is the beginnings of the Sacred Wound. Both parents have a loving relationship with each other, they have a relationship with their paths and a relationship with the system-of-accumulation. However within the family dynamics these relationships impact on the newborn, so immediately that mother love becomes "impure", the level of impurity being a result of the family dynamics - how much of a loving family there actually is! Of course that "impurity" is by design depending on the ego-evolve-consciousness.
Basically alignment is an attempt to regain love - radical mother love - spiritual love - a fuller understanding of this love process will become clearer. What the themes of practice ask you to understand is that over the years restrictions have built up that have restricted the seeker from love - distanced the seeker from the mother-love. Some of this distancing is natural ie khandhas and can be reclaimed, but the restrictions of ego-evolve-consciousness are more difficult. zandtao described how this reclaiming occurred through his practice that he spoke of mainly as realignment.
Let's consider again this realignment in terms of the two themes. Through our upbringing of conditioning and conformity we build up restrictions to the state of mother-love as our seed-consciousness with its khandhas meets the societal infrastructure. These restrictions need to be released. Where are these restrictions held? They are created by ego-evolve-consciousness and held somewhere in the 3 tetrads of body, emotion and mind. We develop our practice to release these restrictions in two ways:-
as an individual restriction through the use of mindfulness and focus as more "group" restrictions by alignment - realigning with the khandhas of seed-consciousness effectively removing non-aligned attachments built in the learning design of ego-evolve-consciousness.
It is this realignment that zandtao spoke of in Ch3 explaining it in terms of how it happened to him eg eschewing the world of work etc.
C
Although it doesn't appear so there was permanent enquiry because alignment was driven by active enquiry - it was not a passive process. Throughout the processes of alignment there would be the release of restriction - release from wage-slavery and the world of work in Matriellez, was he following path or being conditioned and conformed in the Treatise? The centring processes were fundamentally enquiry, was he distant from his path - how far? Centring was an unconscious process answering by bringing bill back to his path - aligning. On a micro-level this unconscious bringing back happened daily through the alignment of MwB.
But this alignment was enquiry throughout, was he aligned to his path? To his purpose? For bill alignment began with upheaval. Throughout his upbringing bill's path was hidden; his path could not have been expressed during his upbringing but he has never felt there was a conflict that forced him to repress his path. It was more an acceptance that conflict would arise with path-expression so let's just put it off. There was an accompanying numbness that pervaded his upbringing, and during upheaval there was a great freedom as the numbness went and he could begin to express. Sadly this was far from complete. Because there was no practice hiding continued after upheaval primarily through alcohol, a habit of hiding learnt as a child. After many years there came an understanding of the need for practice, enquiry did not hide, and path started to align itself.
Not every single minute restriction required the process of enquiry and release through mindfulness and focus. The path could realign itself in a similar way that path started to realign itself during upheaval. But if alignment required the greater attention there was always the enquiry that questioned and brought in mindfulness and focus to release the restriction.
Paths up the mountain are different but zandtao feels there doesn't have to be 100% conscious enquiry. Alignment as unconscious enquiry and release can exist for so many restrictions, after all nature wants us to follow our paths. Just accept alignment and realignment rather than requiring 100% conscious enquiry?
Out of enquiry - conscious or as alignment there is releaase and then comes the need for the second theme of practice - holding space for consciousness. From birth, consciousness fills up with contents. Initially we could think of "good" content with khandhas countering the "bad" content from ego-evolve-consciousness that could include shadow, fragmentation and trauma - at best dukkha. But of course the "bad" content could be considered the "better" content because releasing that content/restrictions is why we are here - finding purpose by evolving design. When these restrictions are released we fill the contents with consciousness - in MwB the dhamma comrades of mindfulness, wisdom, concentration and sampajanna. With emptying of contents and filling with consciousness the seeker can realign sufficiently - a sufficient transcendence. And what was the sufficiency? To reach autonomy. And in autonomy we refine our practice - improve our alignment through the themes of practice.
Autonomy arrives
So autonomy arrives. Over the years (whatever length of time) the seeker develops their practice, and this practice as described overcomes the conditioning and conformity of upbringing and daily life. Throughout this practice there will be moments of transcendence but when there is sufficient transcendence there is autonomy. Autonomy is a kind of culmination of transcendent practice. As with the Diamond Sutra warning (see Addon D) written at the time he crossed the threshold of autonomy it is important to recognise the importance of prior practice, but over time as the seeker becomes comfortable in their autonomy practice can be updated.
Beyond conditioning and conformity
Transcendence just means “beyond conditioning and conformity” - or at least that is how zandtao sees it. Whilst there was a buzz for zandtao around the time of crossing the threshold (a kind of bliss) there was no Stephen Strange; zandtao is unwilling to say that is true for everyone crossing this threshold. Whilst these joys (path rewards) are wonderful, it is not skilful to focus on them. What is more important is the meaning of this autonomy.
Attachment to dogma
A key point of autonomy is the ending of any attachment with a particular dogma - for zandtao this means Buddhism. From the point of autonomy or at least when zandtao began to understand his autonomy and feel confident in it, zandtao did not follow Buddhist teachings; he followed what he had learnt. zandtao was never a follower of Buddhism, not even a follower of Theravada Buddhism, but a follower of Buddhadasa Buddhism. But with autonomy it was not even that. With his autonomy there was mostly no conditioning nor conformity - not even the positive conditioning of Buddhadasa Buddhism.
They can’t get at her/him
zandtao will go into attachment to dogma in more detail later. Having described this separation from following Buddhism he is going to repeat that excellent word that Buddhadasa focussed on - atammayata. Buddhadasa translated it as “unconcoctability”, and this very much describes part of autonomy. “They can’t get at her/him”. This is a wonderful state to be in so long as the seeker remains humble - they can’t get at her/him.
With the phrase they can’t get at her/him, zandtao is being a little loose but it’s OK if he is careful. With transcendence we are talking about going beyond conditioning and conformity. With conditioning we are talking about upbringing and ongoing conditioning and conforming, but with transcendence this conditioning does not affect the autonomous. Transcendence sees the conditioning but the transcended do not let the conditions affect them - they are unconcoctable. "They" strictly means the seeker is mostly not affected by the conditioning and conformity (they - the conditions).
Respect and Pali
At this point it becomes necessary to show appropriate respect. zandtao is extremely grateful to all the teachers who have contributed to his path-learning - mainly Buddhist teachers. His practice was deeply grounded in their teachings, and his autonomy is greatly respectful. But as part of autonomy zandtao recognises that all practices can lead to autonomy, and that there is no one way. zandtao reached his autonomy through a practice that came from Buddhist teachers but other autonomous get there in different ways.
But there is another problem that respect requires acknowledgement of. Theravadan Buddhism uses Pali language to describe many of its understandings but zandtao is now trying to avoid Pali terms because his use of those terms might cause insult to some Buddhist teachers. The 3 restrictions that zandtao now uses as one of the themes of his practice have arisen from understanding and interpretation of anatta, dukkha and anicca - 3 characteristics of Buddhism. zandtao refers to his current practice as freedom from restrictions - freedom from attachment, suffering and clinging; some will see a closeness to the 3 characteristics and some might not. To avoid conflict and possible offence zandtao now describes these as the 3 restrictions - working for freedom from attachment, suffering and clinging but out of respect acknowledges the teachings concerning anatta, dukkha and anicca.
Buddhadasa’s MwB promoted the Dhamma comrades - Buddhadasa described 4 - mindfulness, wisdom, concentration and sampajanna. Initially zandtao increased those Dhamma comrades to 5 for his usage - including compassion, agape or love as the 5th. Out of respect he still continued with the term “Dhamma Comrades” but then stopped. He now refers to them as graces or 5 directions of consciousness - love, wisdom, sila, truth and creativity and 3 skills of consciousness - mindfulness, focus and embodiment.
His practice history is respectful of MwB. Through MWB’s 4 tetrads he removed attachments through realignment in tetrads 1, 2 and 3, and reconnected with Dhamma through the Dhamma Comrades in tetrad 4. But with autonomy and transcendence he is mostly free from the upbringing and conditioning in tetrads 1, 2 and 3, and now embraces 8 graces through consciously-loving-and-evolving-consciousness. His personal history almost reveres Buddhadasa but maybe followers would be offended if what zandtao now practices were still referred to as MwB - he uses ZPAP as described in Addon C. And he thinks consciousness is not used the way Buddhadasa uses vinnana. So zandtao pays great respect to the teachers of his practice history but has changed terms out of that same respect. Dhamma and consciousness might be synonymous - check and see, there is chapter 5 on consciousness.
Focus on Restrictions
They still try to get at him - but with autonomy it is hard for conditions to be concocted. But in daily life consciousness still attaches and he works on restricting the residues of consciousness by releasing the restrictions of attachment to ego, suffering and clinging. zandtao still uses the term khandha to describe that which is not consciousness - the foundations - the basis of the 1st 3 tetrads. Without these aggregates (khandhas) zandtao thinks there can be no life but he does not want the restrictions that attachments to ego, suffering and clinging to khandhas can cause. But he knows that the khandhas must have limited consciousness (vinnana) - khandha-consciousness, or there is no life.
Spiritual approaches that focus on the khandhas tend not to consider the societal infrastructure; Buddhism particularly focusses on individual development. But humans do not exist in isolation and have human development needs. Needs arise through the khandhas from seed-consciousness, and Teal describes 6 needs here - Relationships and 6 Human Needs.
During upbringing human needs develop in a similar way to the khandhas - described in the development model of Addon A. Because they develop in a similar way they can be part of character and personality or they can be part of ego, as with the khandhas character and personality function as meant to but if ego they are part of the learning process of ego-evolve-consciousness.
Conformity and Human-dependency need
Autonomy not only brought freedom from most conditioning it also brought similar freedom from conformity. From our upbringing we are taught to conform to society’s aims as different forms of wage-slave; fitting in with wage-slavery requires conditioning and conformity. But how does conformity work? During our upbringing we develop conformity; this conformity is attached to a human need - the need for human relationship or human dependency. Through our upbringing attachment to this human dependency leads to conformity through agreement and education, and with our autonomy we can decide whether this conformity contributes to social well-being or whether it is an exploitation by the system-of-accumulation which needs wage-slavery.
Unity and Interbeing
Human dependency also builds up friendship, something that regularly occurs in daily life yet is not explained by the use of khandhas - without extending khandha aggregation to include human needs. Human beings need friendship at different stages in their life. Then there is also romantic love that is a mixture of this human-dependency daily need and the consciousness of love. It has the additional benefit that such a need can be attached to by ego-evolve-consciousness ie we can learn from it where we can learn about realignment with mother-love - alignment to radical love.
There is also the spiritual understanding of interbeing put forward by Thich Nhat Hanh (and others?). This notion of interbeing is important in the understanding of connection. The flower does not exist separately, it is part of the interbeing that is nature. There is a seed that grows roots that feeds off the nutrition in the earth whilst at the same time needs the water of rain that comes from clouds, that comes from the formations of those clouds within the weather system - and on the interbeing goes.
In the same way no person is an island, we grow through interbeing and the daily need of human-dependency, we survive through human-dependency but we can also become too attached to this daily need. We detach from approval so that through the directions and skills of consciousness we evaluate and implement. And there are times of solitude where we detach from human-dependency to follow our paths and develop consciously-loving-and-evolving-consciousness, but throughout there is human-dependency and consciousness wanting to give back. This is Unity and Interbeing connected by human need.
Autonomy - Guidance towards Equanimity
Throughout his MwB practice there had built an Inner Guide - perhaps it could be seen as a building autonomy. Once there was autonomy, there was no reliance on being guided by teachers and dogma; his autonomy guided. And it took him to equanimity - love-wisdom balance.
To begin this balance zandtao saw the lack of love. Buddhism is a wisdom tradition although it promotes love as compassion and metta. But as soon as zandtao crossed the threshold as a seeker he began questioning his own equanimity; he also questioned the love-wisdom balance of the institution - the wisdom religion. The love that zandtao felt was missing in his personal balance could simply have been the way he had lived and the way that he had received the teachings - no judgement involved. For zandtao's autonomy redressing that balance was so important; his first autonomous book was Real Love.
This book began with examining love in his life as it moved from the trials and tribulations of romantic love to spiritual love - and then to later loving consciousness. But it moved to love in patriarchy with the help of bell hooks, leading zandtao to ask questions of Buddhist hierarchy - questions only as he knows not of their discussions. Wisdom without love lacks embodiment. Patriarchy can tolerate wisdom without embodiment as marginalised theory without practice. Is love not the fire that turns wisdom into practice? Patriarchy restricts love because it knows love’s fire. Does patriarchy restrict love in wisdom religions? Is there a mutual tolerance of restricting love? Does the institution accept the restriction of love in order to survive?
Practice leads to secular
In Real Love zandtao answered these questions for himself, put the questions to the institution but his autonomy moved on. In Secular Path? he questioned whether there was one Buddhism and this helped him to understand the need for practice but there are many ways that lead to a secular autonomy; the practice on the path is secular and has a tradition or discipline but when the path becomes autonomous it is non-secular - no conformity or conditioning.
In Ch3 zandtao presented his development model - Addon A. This is not a development model copied from a source of authority, it came from his practice and studies. It therefore has deep meaning for zandtao. However when it is presented to the seeker it doesn't have that importance - it is just another ditthi - idea, scheme, approach etc; it does not "belong to the seeker". The only way it can "belong to the seeker" is if it is understood through the seeker's practice.
To try to understand this through practice zandtao suggested the mechanism of "tentatively accepting the model" and seeing if benefits come. And if benefits come then hopefully there will be insights that will convince the seeker - giving the seeker their own truth and conviction concerning the model. Don't force it, if no good practice arises then forget the model and seek elsewhere.
zandtao hopes the model will improve your practice, and presents here how the model developed for him.
Seeing the Sacred Wound
So far zandtao had seen autonomy in terms of transcending conditioning and conformity, and once this transcending happened there came balance as zandtao’s mind was not following Buddhadasa Buddhist teachings. This was balance that came from the freedom of autonomy.
It was in the writing of Secular Path? that Nicola Amadora first became one of his book-teachers, and one aspect of her teaching that resonated with zandtao was her discussions of Sacred Wound. And that resonation meant that understanding Sacred Wound had implications for zandtao's practice. This practice resonation was further enhanced by teachings from another of his teachers, Teal Swan (who has been mentioned earlier). This was through their 2 best books, the full importance of which will be discussed in Ch5 - Nicola Amadora Love Unleashed and Teal Swan How to Love Yourself.
Within this study of love zandtao became conscious of the perspective of Sacred Wounds. In moving beyond conditioning and conformity - transcendence, there was the lessening of attachment to emotions and repression that arose in his upbringing. At different times in adulthood bill had been conscious of anger towards aspects of his upbringing, transcending that anger zandtao became aware of two things:-
His anger at issues in his upbringing were exaggerated - too much attachment Once he had transcended he could see how beneficial his upbringing had been in following his path.
These are characteristics of a Sacred Wound. Once he understood the nature of Sacred Wound, zandtao could understand the nature of bill’s suffering; he also began to understand that bill was complicit with his Sacred Wound - often hiding behind the restrictions the Sacred Wound had given him. What he had railed against all his life - blaming, he now understood as spiritual education - these were the lessons that he later described as lessons the design of ego-evolve-consciousness had intended him to learn.
Further investigation led him to greater understanding that we choose our parents, and he can love consciousness for the way we can choose our parents and the way that suffering from upbringing was minimal despite how much attachment bill had been giving it.
zandtao began to see the Sacred Wound as a holy khandha with so many attachments from upbringing that he began to release throughout adulthood - eventually leading to the gratitude for the holy khandha as a vehicle that led to his path. When studying Buddhadasa he had used the Buddhadasa adage - "removing I and mine from the 5 khandhas". This had shown bill that egos were attaching to khandhas, and recognising egos to remove (restrictions) is an important aspect of one's practice. With his understanding of Sacred Wound and holy khandha he began to understand that we were intended to learn from these egos, and when he was writing zeer-consciousness he put these together as the term ego-evolve-consciousness within the development model that included design, khandhas, Sacred Wound and ego-evolve-consciousness. Whilst this model has to be theoretical to some or all extent to the seeker, for zandtao it grew from practice - and its value can only be measured if it brings benefit to your practice.
So far we have not given much consideration for the second theme of practice:-
One key spiritual skill required to get us to consciousness and holding space is integration. We need first to understand what needs integrating.
From khandha to daily need
In our upbringing, attachment to khandhas builds leading to self-esteem. As we have seen with our development model this attachment in part arises from ego-evolve-consciousness but at the time is there any understanding of this? Definitely not for zandtao as bill. With this attachment to self-esteem there is also attachment to relationship needs, we attach and attach until we agree with the conformity required by our upbringing.
With conditioning of self-esteem and conformity came the need for complicity with work-discipline; this required integrated well-being with work-discipline as the objective. How can mind, emotions, body, relationship needs come together in the world of work without some form of integration. Normally integration is seen as a spiritual tool but if the objective is to be complicit with patriarchy then this is not a spiritual purpose. It is for psychological well-being. We need self-esteem in daily life, and we need mental well-being to accept wage-slavery. These are societally beneficial but they are not spiritual. For more understanding of this we can look at what has been called McMindfulness - see addon E; this discusses how Google and other business practices have used spiritual tools mindfulness especially to make wage-slavery more tolerable - how spiritual tools have helped with conformity.
So self-esteem, our relationship and 6 human needs, and integration are essential for appropriate conforming to society; as explained above a human is not an isolated individual but functions within different social groups - family, school, workplace etc. If we look only at the khandhas they are not seen in relationship to such groups but as individual development. As such khandhas are not a full description of human life (individual development and societal interaction), but they are a sound description of personal development - in some "isolated" sense. For a fuller understanding we need to consider the way khandhas and relationship needs integrate in society and the workplace. Integration is always a good process even if it is only to integrate for well-being in the place of work. However knowing the purpose of integration is more useful in terms of the path.
Sacred Wound and Integration
And then we have the more spiritual need of the Sacred Wound - that zandtao has called the holy khandha. In our upbringing there is much attachment caused by the Sacred Wound. These attached egos need integrating to allow for the well-being of accepting wage-slavery. But that is not the purpose of the suffering of the Sacred Wound nor is it the main reason we have the spiritual tool of integration; that purpose is spiritual.
Through our practice we release attachment to the Sacred Wound enabling us eventually to become autonomous. But it is worth considering this described simply in terms of integration of egos. To follow our paths there is a need for some level of completeness - trying to end any shadow or fragmentation. Before zandtao describes this he gives the seeker a warning, it is better when we are considering shadows and fragmentation to have the help of a kalyana mitta - or perhaps professional help if shadows and fragments are deeply disturbing.
It makes sense that all of who we are follows the path, does it make sense for nature to have only parts of us to follow the path? At birth we begin as natural integrated beings in mother love, but through our upbringing conditioning and conformity cause separation of egos for many reasons. Perhaps we cannot accept what our parents want for us, perhaps we cannot accept what society wants for us, so we separate those parts of us that cannot find harmony with parents and society - fragmentation. They are still part of who we are but they are made unconscious in order not to conflict with love and harmony in our upbringings. These fragments make up our shadow - always with us but not necessarily conscious. This description doesn't sound too bad - it doesn't sound nice but if we can learn to integrate later it seems OK. We will still have harmony in upbringing.
But such fragmentation can be nasty, upbringings can have a nasty side where the child suffers, and because they cannot cope consciously with this suffering they create fragments and shadow. For those suffering in this way therapy can be required, so a seeker must be concerned about the possible impacts of shadow and fragmentation. At the least they need a Kalyana Mitta.
So we have reached the spiritual purpose of integration, to integrate all the egos back into the khandha-consciousness so that we can follow our paths. So using mindfulness and focus we bring egos back into consciousness, release attachment and integrate who we are with consciousness. Fragmented egos take up space that we are not necessarily aware of. Once we make those egos conscious, we can release attachments, reintegrate personality, and use the released space to bring in consciousness.
For zandtao much of this was done through the practice of releasing restrictions but releasing those restrictions occurred through his MWB practice and alignment. Once sufficient restrictions had been released and consciousness brought in (at that stage Buddhadasa's Dhamma comrades), he crossed the threshold where he then focussed on the love-wisdom balance of equanimity. There was integration through the release of restrictions and the bringing-in of consciousness into the space that had been restricted.
So far we have seen integration as a spiritual tool but calling integration a tool is a description within a separation infrastructure. Starting from mother love upbringing through conditioning and conformity causes separation - from separate egos to shadow and fragmentation. These egos can cause restriction so our practice releases these restrictions, our practice ends separation, our practice integrates. It brings us back to Unity-consciousness that we first felt in mother-love, integration is not a separate spiritual tool but Unity-consciousness naturally coming back together again. That is the essence of our practice - to feel Unity-consciousness.
It is not weakness in a tradition
With autonomy taking zandtao towards Unity-consciousness (Ch5)zandtao wants to make an important reflection. When he was looking into the equanimity of love-wisdom balance, he was not being critical of Buddhadasa. zandtao could not possibly see loopholes in such a great teacher, he was seeing weaknesses in what he had received. He did go on to question the institution because an institution is vulnerable because of its infrastructural defensiveness; but they were questions for enquiry - not judgements. zandtao has no doubts that Buddhadasa understood equanimity, love-wisdom balance and any other gaps in zandtao’s own received teachings and understandings. If zandtao had access to Buddhadasa he is sure that Buddhadasa could provide answers to any question he asked. What matters with autonomy and the teachings connected to practice is that the seeker is asking the questions and is seeking answers despite the tradition. In autonomy the seeker finds their own answers; for zandtao autonomy occurred outside the tradition but maybe it can be inside?
Moving towards Unity-consciousness
As we are moving towards a feeling of Unity-consciousness let us review so far. Born in mother-love, seed-consciousness develops a personality. As upbringing of conditioning and conformity builds this personality, the seeker develops personally and in relationship to society (along the lines of the human infrastructure and societal infrastructure described in the intro). Out of this conditioning the ego-evolve-consciousness develops the Sacred Wound, and at the same time we maybe have developed the self-esteem that enables some form of material success within wage-slavery. Reconciling the inner child throughout our lives can help us see important memories and release the apparently never-ending egos of the Sacred Wound.
Hopefully in adulthood the path can kick in some awareness through the restrictions of conditioning and conformity thus developing some form of awareness of that path. But awareness means little without a practice. As we begin to understand our upbringing of conditioning and conformity there can begin enquiry into restrictions and the Sacred Wound leading to release through mindfulness and focus. Through dedication to practice we start to move beyond the conditioning and conformity leading to a sufficient state of atammayata - freedom from conditioning and conformity - that can bring autonomy. We leave behind the Sacred Wound with a gratitude to all that have contributed to our paths.
There are many ways up the mountain or many rafts across the river, but once crossed we leave the raft behind as it can restrict - remembering that there is still a need for dedication to practice. In a state of raft-less autonomy we evaluate and guide our own paths to overcome our own misunderstandings and achieve a sufficient balance to feel Unity-consciousness.
Understanding Alignment as Practice 
Alignment that is free from restrictions 
Books:-